"If any Gentlemen, and others, will be pleased to send me any relations about Spirits, Witches, and Apparitions, In any part of the Kingdom; or any Information about the Second Sight, Charms, Spells, Magic, and the like, They shall oblige the Author, and have them publisht to their satisfaction.
"Direct your Relations to Alexander Ogstouns, Shop Stationer, at the foot of the Plain-stones, at Edinburgh, on the North-side of the Street."Is this not a pleasing opportunity for Gentlemen, and Others, whose Aunts have beheld wraiths, doubles, and fetches? It answers very closely to the requests of the Society for Psychical Research, who publish, as some one disparagingly says, "the dreams of the middle classes." Thanks to Freedom, Progress, and the decline of Superstition, it is now quite safe to see apparitions, and even to publish the narrative of their appearance.
But when Mr. George Sinclair, sometime Professor of Philosophy in Glasgow, issued the invitation which I have copied, at the end of his "Satan's Invisible World Discovered," the vocation of a seer was not so secure from harm. He, or she, might just as probably be burned as not, on the charge of sorcery, in the year of grace, 1685. However, Professor Sinclair managed to rake together an odd enough set of legends, "proving clearly that there are Devils," a desirable matter to have certainty about. "Satan's Invisible World Discovered" is a very rare little book; I think Scott says in a MS. note that he had great difficulty in procuring it, when he was at work on his "infernal demonology." As a copy fell in my way, or rather as I fell in its way, a helpless victim to its charms and its blue morocco binding, I take this chance of telling again the old tales of 1685.
Mr. Sinclair began with a long dedicatory Epistle about nothing at all, to the Lord Winton of the period. The Earl dug coal-mines, and constructed "a moliminous rampier for a harbour." A"moliminous rampier" is a choice phrase, and may be envied by novelists who aim at distinction of style. "Your defending the salt pans against the imperious waves of the raging sea from the NE. is singular," adds the Professor, addressing "the greatest coal and salt-master in Scotland, who is a nobleman, and the greatest nobleman who is a Coal and Salt Merchant." Perhaps it is already plain to the modern mind that Mr. George Sinclair, though a Professor of Philosophy, was not a very sagacious character.
Mr. Sinclair professes that his proofs of the existence of Devils "are no old wife's trattles about the fire, but such as may bide the test." He lived, one should remember, in an age when faith was really seeking aid from ghost stories. Glanvil's books--and, in America, those of Cotton Mather--show the hospitality to anecdotes of an edifying sort, which we admire in Mr. Sinclair. Indeed, Sinclair borrows from Glanvil and Henry More, authors who, like himself, wished to establish the existence of the supernatural on the strange incidents which still perplex us, but which are scarcely regarded as safe matter to argue upon. The testimony for a Ghost would seldom go to a jury in our days, though amply sufficient in the time of Mr. Sinclair. About "The Devil of Glenluce" he took particular care to be well informed, and first gave it to the world in a volume on--you will never guess what subject--Hydrostatics! In the present work he offers us "The Devil of Glenluce Enlarged With several Remarkable Additions from an Eye and Ear Witness, A Person of undoubted Honesty."Mr. Sinclair recommends its "usefulness for refuting Atheism."Probably Mr. Sinclair got the story, or had it put off on him rather, through one Campbell, a student of philosophy in Glasgow, the son of Gilbert Campbell, a weaver of Glenluce, in Galloway; the scene in our own time, of a mysterious murder. Campbell had refused alms to Alexander Agnew, a bold and sturdy beggar, who, when asked by the Judge whether he believed in a God, answered:
"He knew no God but Salt, Meal, and Water." In consequence of the refusal of alms, "The Stirs first began." The "Stirs" are ghostly disturbances. They commenced with whistling in the house and out of it, "such as children use to make with their small, slender glass whistles." "About the Middle of November," says Mr.
Sinclair, "the Foul Fiend came on with his extraordinary assaults."Observe that he takes the Foul Fiend entirely for granted, and that he never tells us the date of the original quarrel, and the early agitation. Stones were thrown down the chimney and in at the windows, but nobody was hurt.
Naturally Gilbert Campbell carried his tale of sorrow to the parish Minister. This did not avail him. His warp and threads were cut on his loom, and even the clothes of his family were cut while they were wearing them. At night something tugged the blankets off their beds, a favourite old spiritual trick, which was played, if Iremember well, on a Roman Emperor, according to Suetonius. Poor Campbell had to remove his stock-in-trade, and send his children to board out, "to try whom the trouble did most follow." After this, all was quiet (as perhaps might be expected), and quiet all remained, till a son named Thomas was brought home again. Then the house was twice set on fire, and it might have been enough to give Thomas a beating. On the other hand, Campbell sent Thomas to stay with the Minister. But the troubles continued in the old way. At last the family became so accustomed to the Devil, "that they were no more afraid to keep up the Clash" (chatter) "with the Foul Fiend than to speak to each other." They were like the Wesleys, who were so familiar with the fiend Jeffrey, that haunted their home.